CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
China is being blamed for a proposal by The World Heritage Committee, which sits under UNESCO, to move the Great Barrier Reef to the ‘endangered’ list because of the impact of climate change
Environment Minister Sussan Ley says Australia has been “blindsided” the recommendation, suggesting the decision was politically motivated, because everyone is picking on us for no reason – and it has nothing to do with the thousands of scientists who have been banging their heads against the wall for nearly a decade while trying to explain to our government that rapidly burning fossil fuels at such an accelerating rate is not very good for the 90% of the world’s sea species that live alongside our heavily mined and drilled North Queensland coastline.
Ms Ley described the decision as a “backflip” and they had not received the necessary consultation leading up to it.
“It is a deviation from normal process.” she said.
The World Heritage Committee will consider the decision at a meeting in China, next month.
The mere mention of the word ‘China’ has provided the Federal Government a scapegoat for this embarrassing turn of events – as they ramp up there tit-for-tat tensions with the world’s leading economy and our biggest trading partner in an effort to impress the redneck commentators in the Australian media.
Marine scientists say the climate change denying government should not be surprised by this ruling, following countless of independent studies surrounding the bleaching of two-thirds of the corals in the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef, which have died in the reef’s worst-ever bleaching events that have been taking place over the last decade.
For many years before this announcement the Barrier Reef had already been visibly affected by rising ocean temperatures, and the environmental vandalism of careless spill offs from nearby industries that have caused the fragile ecosystem to nearly collapse.
However, local tourism operators, who have already been crushed by a pandemic that refuses to fuck off due to our governments inability to order enough vaccines or quarantine properly – insist that they’ve been seeing heaps of fish and shit out there on their boats… and please don’t stop visiting.
